Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Gun Cay, Bahamas
25.35.959N
79.17.838W


We're still here - putting amps in the can. When we got up at midnight, we turned off the anchor lights, turned on the instruments and went topside to check out the howling wind. Thirty knots. We turned off the instruments, turned on the anchor lights and went back to bed. Apparently everyone else in the anchorage thought the same thing, since we're all still here.
We're being held captive by a Nor-easter that brought cooler temperatures to the area. We noticed that our neighbors are all wearing their coats but with our enclosure, we're pretty comfortable. We spent the day reading, playing marathon Cribbage, Dale studied his weather books and I watched one of the other boats work on their sails then practice various points of sail with them reefed.

At one point during the day, Dale came up the companionway and said "Hi! My name is Dale and I'm a amp nazi. I hadn't said anything but he'd been jumping up every half hour or so scrambling down the stairs to check to see how many amps the wind generator or solar panels were putting out. Then he'd reappear pumping the air with his fist declaring so many with the wind generator and so many with the solar panels. It didn't matter though. After I ran the refrigerator for a half an hour, it'd drain them out again. He seemed satisfied that we can run everything (except the refrigerator) without thought with just the wind/solar power; the refrigerator, however, needs to be regulated carefully.

All and all a pretty quiet day. Tonight the winds are supposed to subside a bit and clock back around to the west, so we'll try to exit our staging area again tomorrow.